


isn’t it lovely?

by leahowlett



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Post S8, Unrequited Love, Voltron Season 8 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 13:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17387480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahowlett/pseuds/leahowlett
Summary: The wedding—and after the wedding—from Krolia’s point of view.AKA Keith really needs a hug.





	isn’t it lovely?

**Author's Note:**

> Let me preface this by saying: bear with me, I haven’t posted a fanfiction in a really long time. 
> 
> This is a really venty piece that I started writing after I finished watching season 8. I would have posted it earlier, but I’ve been feeling extremely negative and down lately, and everything I write seems awful. I want to get this out for others to read before I change my mind. I wish I’d posted it sooner, but I had no motivation to finish it until today, which is strange because today has been the most discouraging day I’ve had in a while. 
> 
> I chose not to tag Shiro and his husband as a ship, because that would be really rude to people who actually enjoy it and want to look through the tag hate-free. But this is post-canon-ending, so yes, though I don’t go into any detail, they do get married. 
> 
> And I know it's not Shiro's fault, nor Curtis' fault, nor any of their faults that this ending happened. I hold no resentment towards any of the characters. It's literally just a vent piece.
> 
> I’m sorry this is so short, but it seems this is all I could do. Thank you for giving the time to read.

_isn't it lovely, all alone?_  
_heart made of glass, my mind of stone_  
_tear me to pieces, skin and bone_  
_hello, welcome home_

-lovely, Billie Eilish & Khalid

 

Krolia finds him in the bathroom.

No one has seen Keith since the reception. Krolia kicks herself for letting him out of her sight in the first place, but Kolivan had taken her aside for an empire-related matter, something that couldn’t wait, and when she came back, he was gone.

Upon seeing Hunk and Pidge’s worried faces, Lance, ever comical despite himself, suggested that Keith might have “gotten a room with James,” as he put it. Krolia isn’t naive enough to not know what he was hinting at, even if it’s a vague Earthen saying, but she still said nothing. They didn’t know, or didn’t say it out loud. Keith only has eyes for one person.

She saw Keith during the wedding. His brows tilted down, arms crossed over his chest defensively, mouth curved up in a way that was too wobbly to be genuine. After Shiro kissed his husband—Krolia doesn’t remember his name—he looked back at Keith. Smiling. Crying. So full of joy, it was no wonder her smitten son found it in himself to smile back.

The now-newlywed couple had rented out almost an entire hotel for the many guests attending their wedding. It was almost twisted how fate played with her son. Shiro decided to assign the Paladins’ rooms on the same floor as his, yet the rooms next to the others’ were already occupied, putting Keith’s room at the far end of the hallway. Alone. No doubt, Shiro had no idea this would happen, no idea the implication it had likely put in Keith’s mind. That he was always meant to be alone.

She finds him now, sitting under the heated spray of the hotel shower. Staring at nothing, arms around his drawn-up legs, chin resting on his red knees. It takes until she’s kneeling down next to the bath tub for his eyes to drag up from the floor.

“Mom?” he says, voice hoarse, but not with the intensity and indignance that’s normally expected of being walked in on while using the baths, if she’s learned anything from Earth’s unusual customs. Isn’t the curtain supposed to be drawn, as well? That’s concerning.

“Keith,” she says, simply.

He looks down at the floor again, blinks. Disarmed. Absent-minded. Her chest aches with concern.

“Let’s get you out of there. Okay, Little One?”

A nod, slow and delayed.

She turns the shower off, reaches for a fluffy white towel from the rack above the sink mirror, and waits as he manages to stand, hand against the wall to preserve his efforts. His knees creak audibly. He’s far too young for his body to make such a sound.

As he steps onto the bath rug, shivering, she wraps a fluffy white towel around his shoulders, and he blankly grips the edges of it. Hand on his back, she gently guides him to the bedroom. In the state he’s in, she can’t trust that he won’t sit down on the carpeted floor and fall asleep.

He doesn’t instantly curl up on the bed and lose himself to unconsciousness like she expects him to—instead, as she puts her back to the bed’s headboard, expecting a talk, he goes to his suitcase and manages to find a pair of black sweatpants. (He has some semblance of human societal decency, then.) They haven’t been washed since the last time he wore them, she notices, but he doesn’t have many pairs to choose from in his sparse collection of clothing.

He gingerly pulls himself onto the bed, and, after hesitating for just a moment, leans into her side. She lets him test the waters, put his cheek on her shoulder, bend his knees to curl up more. His hair is wet against her expensive dress shirt. She doesn’t care. He’s never been attracted to affection, that she knows of, and she’s never been one to coddle him. But this is different.

“Mom.” His voice is rough, quiet.

“Yes?”

“It happened.”

She nods, silent. Gives him time.

“I-I still thought… maybe…” he continues, but trails off.

He’d seen so many possibilities in the Quantum Abyss. She’d asked what he saw, and he’d told her. Even though she’d already seen. Visions of alternate realities, different paths theirs could take, some horrifying, some too good to be true. Some repeated, constantly. One in particular.

Different men. Different circumstances. Different times. He had known this was the most likely possibility—but that didn’t soften the blow.

He swallows and inclines his head. Hiding.

“My chest hurts.”

“I know.” She puts an arm around him, rests it on his opposite shoulder. Supporting. Hopes it shows what words can’t. He fidgets. His thumb rubbing against his pointer finger. A nervous tic, unique to him. A few moments of quiet before he speaks again.

“H-how do I make it stop?”

He means more than the hurt. He means the pressure. He means the weight. The way it drags one down and down. Torments the conscience. Takes away drive and replaces it with a muscular ache in the center of one’s worldly body and an overwhelming urge to lie down and never get up again.

“Time,” is her answer.

His face falls.

“Well... Patience yields focus, right?” he says with a laugh, and then he starts crying.

She knew it had built up, that he had been holding it in. In the two years they’d spent together, she’d learned that her son internalizes everything. Lets his irritation and sorrow grow and fester until he can’t hold it back anymore. Until he hurts himself, in every sense of the term. Forever ashamed of his own feelings.

He reaches for her. She doesn’t hesitate—wraps both arms around him, pulls him in, holds him firm. Holds him close. He’s shuddering. Trying to muffle it in her shirt. Trying so hard to keep the mask together. But she knows better. And she won’t give him up. She won’t let go of the best thing that ever happened to her. Stays strong when he can’t. Gives him shelter. Gives him all she can offer and hopes it’s enough.

And he accepts it. And she loves him, so dearly. Holds on even when the first choked sob rolls out of his chest and overwhelms him, when he digs his fingers into her shirt, curls his body up against hers, and she tightens her arms, realizes how his frame has thinned, and she’s brutally reminded of how young he is. For all his cold and hardened persona shows, he hurts. He bleeds.

She wants fiercely to protect him, because he should never have to mourn like she did. She wants to defend him against the hurt, the heartache. Take a blade and run it through, beat it back with tooth and nail, if need be. But she can’t. Though it kills her, though he will never be alone as long as she lives, this is something her son will have to face himself. And it starts with the way he shakes at her side, agonized gasps pushing past his hastily assembled wall and leaving his face soaked.

Time passes. She doesn’t know how much. As his desperate lamenting quiets, she pushes a hand through his hair. Smooths out the knots, rubs fingers into his scalp. Keith finally sighs, lets himself go. The tension leaves his body.

“How’s your chest now, Little One?” she asks, breaks the silence gently.

“Empty.” His voice is a wreck. But calmer. 

She leans, kisses the top of his head. “Good,” she murmurs into his hair. “It’s time to heal. And healing requires rest.”

He nods, weak.

And he needs space, too. She knows her Keith, and he won’t want to talk or touch anymore. And she won’t push, for fear of pushing him away. She makes to get up, untangles her arms, lets him go, but it surprises her when he clutches tighter, inhaling sharply.

“Please, stay?”

He must think he’s being selfish. Bites his lower lip, squeezes his eyes shut, but she’s quick to bring him back in. He settles against her, the side of his head pressed to her chest.

“Of course. You never have to ask.”

He lets out a long breath, from somewhere deep inside his chest.

She hopes he can hear it, somewhere in her heartbeat. That one never forgets. One can only move on.

There’s a flash of light, and the wolf appears at the foot of the bed. He seems satisfied, licking his lips, has probably been begging for scraps of food for hours, and there are colored bits of shiny paper in his fur.

He spots Keith and flops down next to him, front paws across Krolia’s legs, letting out a contented noise as he rubs his nose into her pants. Keith reaches out, sifts his hand through navy hairs, clutches at them, holds on to something familiar. The wolf has always been there for Keith. It’s something Krolia wishes they had in common.

“I told him I loved him.” Keith’s facing away from her. She doesn’t need to see his expression to know how he feels.

“And do you regret it?”

“No,” he whispers.

The wolf looks at Keith, then his eyes flick to Krolia.

“He’s happy. That’s all I want.”

She runs a hand through his hair, solemn. “He is.”

More quiet. Keith starts shaking again, gripping onto them both. Whispers, “I'm sorry.”

She shushes him. “There's nothing to be sorry for.”

The wolf whines softly, leans in. He starts licking Keith’s face. Her son breathes out—a disheartened laugh—and there’s the soft thumping of a tail against the bed as the creature noses his way into Keith’s hold.

Keith sniffles and hugs the wolf closer. “Love you guys.”

Krolia smiles, chest overwhelmed with fondness. She squeezes him closer.

“We love you, too, Keith.”

He relaxes, lets out a breath and allows his shoulders to fall. She wonders how many times in his life he’s heard someone say that. Heard someone say it back.

Eventually, Keith’s body grows heavy. He always curls up when he rests, as if to take up as little space as possible, as he does now, burrowing his face and hands into dark fur, legs folded. The wolf follows him into slumber soon after, starts snoring quietly, paws twitching every now and then.

“You may be a man now, Little One,” Krolia murmurs to Keith as he breathes in and out, a secret, something she’ll say only to him, even if he’s deep in unconsciousness. “But you will always be my boy.”

And even in sleep, he clings, desperate for someone who will stay. Who won’t abandon him, won’t leave him behind. Won’t give up on him. Won’t let him drown in the shower, won’t let him suffer alone, won’t let him keep all of his sorrow inside until it kills him.

So she does what she didn’t do twenty-one years ago.

She does what his father didn’t do.

She does what his beloved didn’t do.

 

She stays.

 

**Author's Note:**

> #letkeithcryincanon
> 
> My Tumblr: leahowlett
> 
> My Twitter: @promiseimbetter


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